Celebrity Traitors star Hannah Fry details being diagnosed with cervical cancer, having a radical hysterectomy and going through a divorce all before the age of 40

DAILYMAIL.COM • 1h ago

By AMELIA WYNNE, SHOWBUSINESS REPORTER 15:55 09 Oct 2026, updated 16:08 09 Oct 2026

Celebrity Traitors star Hannah Fry has detailed being diagnosed with cervical cancer, having a radical hysterectomy and going through a divorce all before the age of 40.

The mathematician, 42, was diagnosed with cancer at the age of 36 after undergoing a routine smear test before undergoing a radical hysterectomy that removed her cervix, uterus, both ovaries, fallopian tubes and several pelvic lymph nodes.

Before her diagnosis she had two daughters, now six and eight, with her sports writer husband Phil Lythell, but said she regrets not having a much wanted third child.

Hannah said: ‘I always wanted to have three, because I was one of three. It’s a regret, but it’s one I can’t be too upset about. I still have two gorgeous girls,’ she has said this week when reflecting on her family life.

She and Phil sadly divorced in 2022 after nine years of marriage and Hannah has admitted that her health struggles probably contributed to the split.

She said: ‘I split up with my husband not very long after [the cancer battle], about a couple of years after. And I don’t think it was a coincidence.’

Hannah told The Times: ‘He was amazing, by the way, during that whole experience. He’s a really, really brilliant man but I got divorced soon after recovering from cancer.

‘So, at 40, I was living on my own and only seeing my children half the time and that was pretty tough.’

The pair have remained close, both living on the same street in Greenwich, with her previously describing their separation as a ‘grade A, gold-star divorce’.

Hannah is now happily living with her new partner Oli, with the pair even spending time with her ex Phil.

In an interview last November she said: ‘Yesterday, my ex-husband and my new partner had a cup of tea together in my house without me.

‘What is the key to that? I don’t know. Fabulous respect, I guess.’

Hannah hasn’t yet touched on her health challenges on Celebrity Traitors.

On Thursday night’s episode however, Hannah was recruited to join Maya Jama and James Acaster as a Traitor.

Earlier in the episode, viewers watched as the mathematician and broadcaster imparted her wisdom on Joe Lycett.

She shared that she has a huge spreadsheet which she adds to every night and tracks all the possible combinations and universes of Traitors.

And her method is inspired by none other than Alan Turing.

In a video posted to her YouTube channel prior to the beginning of the series, Hannah explained her plan was to work out ‘combinations of people would not work together as traitors’.

She told fans: ‘So, if you imagine all of the possible universes of all of the possible combinations of three traitors, and then all I’ve got to do is eliminate those possibilities one by one to hopefully lead me to the correct three people.

‘I should tell you I stole this method from Alan Turing. This is exactly how he approached cracking the Enigma machine.

‘He started off with the list of all of the possibilities and then eliminated everything that wouldn’t work to sort of get him to the final answer.’

Hannah explained the only problem with this theory is that there are 21 people -which means there is a total of 1,330 possible universes.

Planning to ask to be a faithful, and stay a faithful, Hannah explained that means she can then eliminate a lot of those universes where she is included, which takes the total to 1,140.

She also revealed she thinks it is unlikely Claudia would pick three traitors who are the same type of person, for example three comedians, or three young people etc.

Hannah then uses this assumption to remove further combinations.

The star explained that each day as someone is murdered and banished these universes can be eliminated.

She then estimated that by day four, you’re down to 72 universes, she added: ‘I think that by day five, I think you’ll be down to just a handful of potential universes.

‘So now I’ve got this much smaller set of groups, which in theory, I mean, if this works, means that I should be getting quite close to who the traitors are by day five.’

Hannah is also tracking who sits next to each other at breakfast, during the roundtable and in the car as she believes it would be unlikely for three traitors to ever be in the one car or sit together in a row.

She explained: ‘There might be two traitors in a car, sure, but I don’t think you will ever have three. So if there are four people in a car, I get to delete four universes.’

Hannah also revealed she has watched back every episode of both the civilian and the celebrity UK Traitors series and made pages of notes tracking traitor and faithful behaviour.

She has then input this all into a spreadsheet and crunched the numbers to see if there were any ‘statistically significant patterns in the way that traitors behaved,’ she added: ‘and it turns out there were some absolute gems in there.’

However, Hannah’s efforts cannot be put to use any more as the star is no longer playing as a Faithful, as she first assumed she would be.

During Thursday’s episode it caused both suspicion and confusion at breakfast, when both Hannah and Jerry Hall returned to breakfast – indicating a recruitment had taken place.

Assuming she was a goner, Hannah was left shocked after she received the letter of recruitment.

Attempting to act as normal as possible, Hannah now must try to continue to play ‘as a Faithful’ when she is really a Traitor.

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